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* Deutsches Studentenwerk (DSW - the German National Association for Student Affairs) presents new research on students with disabilities and chronic diseases in Germany * Problems identified by the study: timeline and organizational requirements, lack of support, individual interests in teaching process are too little considered * Compensation of disadvantages and counseling efforts are effective, but are too seldom used * Three out of four students have impairment-related extra costs * DSW president Prof. Dr. Dieter Timmermann: "There is still much to do on the way to University-for-All * 15.000 students with disabilities and chronic illnesses from 160 universities participated in an online survey in Germany, making the study nationally representative. Due to their disability or health situation, many students experience difficulties with the schedule and formal requirements of their studies, for example with frequent exams, inflexible classes modules or presence requirements. At times, teachers are not open to the impairment-related needs of their students. Often, there is also often a lack of necessary support like scripts in accessible version. Compensation of disadvantages and counseling are indeed effective, but also too seldom used - mostly because students don't know about such possibilities or do not want to speak openly about it. Nearly three quarters of students have impairment-related additional cost of their university studies; 15% have massive problems to secure their study financing. More than 15.000 affected students took part in the DSW-survey, out of which - 12% said that disability or health situation has a negative influence on the study process. - the large majority is suffering from mental and/or chronic diseases - 6% of respondents have dyslexia or any other learning disabilities - almost two thirds of respondents reported severe or very severe difficulties in their study process The DSW- survey "

"These barriers to educational technology should not be tolerated by students on campus," writes Damron in part of the letter announcing the investigation to the campus and Missoula community; she continues, "Inclusionary and exclusionary practices speak volumes for the reputation of our institution. Students with disabilities have a civil right to post-secondary education at federally funded universities."

Universal Design (UD) implies to plan and manufacture goods, buildings, outdoor spaces and facilities to be useable by all people to the fullest possible extent. UD has evolved from a focus on disabling barriers in the environments. As a strategy, UD has not yet clarified its relation to disability.

This study investigated the extent and nature of university students' use of digital technologies for learning and socialising. The findings show that students use a limited range of mainly established technologies. Use of collaborative knowledge creation tools, virtual worlds, and social networking sites was low.

International students at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in western Germany may soon only need to turn on their laptops to understand their professors - a new program is will automatically transcribe lecture and translate them into English. The result will appear almost simultaneously on the student's computer screen, like subtitles on a film.

(...) the University won a lawsuit brought against it and other schools by The Authors Guild, Inc. and other author associations in September 2011 challenging the legality of its HathiTrust digitization program. (...)

The Center for Research on Learning, at the University of Kansas Lawrence campus, is an internationally recognized research and development organization noted for creating solutions that dramatically improve quality of life, learning, and performance - especially for those who experience barriers to success.

Tool development within ESPON 2013 is targeted to the use of policy makers and practitioners at all administrative levels (including cross-border and transnational groupings) and will enable the use of information and data by these particular groups of stakeholders. Most tools will be online, made available via the ESPON website. As such they will also be at the disposal of the general public, including researchers and university students, thereby contributing to the use of ESPON data and information and the consolidation of a European research field on territorial development and cohesion. At the moment five tools are made accessible via the ESPON website. How these tools link to the project groups and the policy makers is visualised in the figure below. The green arrows in this figure show the use for the policy makers and the blue arrows show the flows from the ESPON projects (the Final Reports or the data resulting from the projects) to the tools and vice versa: The ESPON projects deliver data to the ESPON database and maps to the Online MapFinder. On the other hand, the ESPON projects receive input from the ESPON Database, the Mapping Guide and Typologies. The policy makers can find and use ESPON results via the Online MapFinder, the HyperAtlas and the ESPON DataBase.

The Harvard Law School Project on Disability (HPOD) works to promote the human rights of people with disabilities worldwide.

Inclusive Design Approach The introduction of the 'Accessible Means of Egress Icon', or 'Wheelie Man' (as it has lovingly become known by all those involved in the project) onto accessible exit signage changes the current discriminatory approach to exit signs in buildings and presents a fully inclusive universal design.

This article is part of Future Tense, a collaboration among Arizona State University, New America, and Slate. At noon on Wednesday, March 4, Future Tense will host an event in Washington, D.C., on technology and the future of disability. For more information and to RSVP, visit the New America website.